Need advice (again) please!

Gave LO 4 low allergen foods when we first started weaning and I think he reacted to them all. Horrible aggressive burps, unsettled nights and struggling with milk feeds.

After letting everything settle down I've now started weaning again (while I wait for gastro appt.). LO has had 4 days of carrot and no reaction (yippee!) BUT reflux seems to have increased recently and we had a bad bout yesterday.
Teething has calmed down at mo and no other illness.

My confusion is - how interlinked are the food and reflux? If I don't think he's showing signs of reacting to carrot but reflux is flaring what's the best thing to do?
Paed wanted to increase Omeprazole from 20mg upwards but I declined.

Would you increase meds or just ride it out (it's not great but not at its worst) and see what gastro from Great Ormond St says?

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Permalink Reply by Jenny Rawling on May 2, 2012 at 14:22

I've tended to err on the side of riding it out. It's hard to wean down the meds once they've gone up. Obviously that depends on how bad things are though. How long do you have to wait to be seen at GOSH?

There seem to be basically two types of reactions that could make the reflux worse - the first is foods that just seem to trigger reflux or increase acid production - these would be ASW's "red" foods. The second is the proteins that can trigger allergic or non-IgE immune responses (mainly the MEWS proteins but also protein components in other foods) and you'll get a variety of signs with these which might include increased reflux as well as the other GI signs, congestion, skin rashes etc. Then there are children who seem to react badly to groups of foods that contain histamine (because they lack or have low levels of the enzyme to break it down) or latex (IgE allergy to a group of fruits/veg) all the way through to children who can't tolerate much food at all, probably for a variety of types of reactions.

Just to confuse matters further if the gut is inflammed and the reflux not controlled then you can get apparent reactions to any food at all.

It's all very complicated and I've heard of lots of people being told by dieticians that their child "can't be reacting" to foods that seem to trigger symptoms. It is just trial and error. You may find the "sticky" post in the top section interesting if you haven't already come across it, Food%2520intol-alergic%2520baby.html in particular the last section on introducing foods which suggests a scoring system and a time interval for retrying foods - so maybe you give carrot a score of "1" and try something else for a while?

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Permalink Reply by Beth on May 2, 2012 at 15:53

Thank you so much Jen for taking the time to explain.

That explains why the paed kept insisting he couldn't have reacted to swede, pear etc he would only react to milk,egg,wheat, soya and as I hadnt given him any of those things she wanted to increase meds.

We have to wait a few weeks for gastro appt. but think I'll ride it out - I don't feel comfortable constantly increasing meds before investigating further.

Feel a little frustrated as the paed is lovely but often trots out the line that when he's got food in him as it's solid it can't reflux so easily. As I do BLW (which works for us and I love) she seems to think it's a quantity issue. Sorry, moan over as that's not productive!

Thank you again X

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Permalink Reply by Beth on May 2, 2012 at 16:02

That also explains the allergen scale and ok, caution, danger list I have to. Was getting a bit confused. Sometimes difficult when you KNOW your baby has reacted to a food but the paed is adamant that wouldn't be the case X

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Permalink Reply by Jenny Rawling on May 2, 2012 at 17:38

Would go with your experience over what anyone says "ought" to be ok every time. We did a thread at one point and I couldn't name a single food that was ok for every baby on it, although there were the obvious repeat offenders! I think there are so many levels on which they could potentially have a reaction it makes it very difficult to say with any confidence that any food is "safe".